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Kodak’s Missed Opportunities

The wheels of fate that led the photography company into Chapter 11 began spinning in 1975.
January 19, 2012

No one is really surprised that Eastman Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection. What might surprise some people, though, is that the digital camera, the device that led to the company’s undoing, was invented at Kodak in 1975. Here is a 2005 piece that includes an interview with the engineer behind it.

We also explored Kodak’s spiral last month in our Business Impact package on Disruptive Innovation. Some charts in that piece really stood out to me, and are reprinted below. These show how quickly Kodak’s business fell apart, and how big of an opportunity it missed.

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